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Improving civil preparedness for a CBRN incident in Europe

TOXI-triage brings together 19 expert teams from across Europe

The University is leading a pan-European, interdisciplinary project, exploring ways to improve civil preparedness in the event of a catastrophic chemical, biological, radioactive, or nuclear (CBRN) incident in Europe.

The four-year project – TOXI-triage – brings together expert teams drawn from seven European member states spanning the emergency and health services, defence, a range of industrial partners, and seven universities.

The 19 teams provide expertise across a wide range of disciplines including chemistry, crisis and conflict communication, information management and large scale networks and systems, medicine and healthcare ergonomics, security and intelligence studies, and urban search and rescue.

They will examine civilian preparedness for a CBRN event to determine how it can be strengthened and distributed in support of routine clinical treatment of poisoning. They will also test whether effective and diagnostically sound medical care can be given to the casualties of a CBRN event amid the confusion, disorder, and dangers of CBRN agents.

On a practical level, they will seek to equip emergency services with advanced methods to determine the level of casualty exposure to poisons. The approach will be based on routine community medical care of everyday toxic injuries, but underpinned by advanced technology that could be deployed seamlessly for CBRN incidents that would currently overwhelm emergency services.